The only upkeep I do is to trim off the dead flowers at the end of the season and trim out the little bit of dead wood each spring. If you look at my photo from last August you will see what my Little Lamb looks like. That is pretty much what it looked like later in the season. This season is might be slightly larger, but there is no sign it will be floppy. I may have just purchased a very mature shrub. It doesn't lay on the ground the way people describe. I believe I planted it summer of 2008, but it was a fairly large plant (although I recall it had almost no roots, I was actually worried it wouldn't make it), so it isn't *really* just 3 years old. I actually mis-purchased...I wanted something that would get large for that corner (like Tardiva), but I'm happy with it. If you want floppy, you should see my Swan.

I don't grow the Macs for the reason you encountered. They can be an iffy proposition in Zone 6. You didn't mention it, but winters can often be too cold for them. The plant will go on growing, but the blooms which were set on old wood from last autumn often will not survive the cold--so no blooms in the spring and summer. I'm very enthusiastic about paniculatas and arborensens hydrangreas. The paniculatas can take lots of sun and a hydrangea like Annabelle can tolerate some sun, though it definitely needs protection from the direct sun in the afternoon. My Annabelles bloom for the first half of summer, while my paniculatas bloom for the second half of summer. Works out good! The paniculatas I grow are Pinky Winky and Vanilla Strawberry. As far as the drooping hydrangeas you already have, buy some of those green-wire "fences" they have a Home Depot and such places. I don't know what to call them other than "fences"--just insert them into the ground around the hydrangeas--that will hold them up, and the green wire can hardly be seen by visitors. Those green-wire "fences" come in several different heights, so pick one that comes about 3/4s the way up your hydrangeas. Hope that helps. Kate

Little Lime is bigger than Bobo, as are the flowerheads. Both of these are very sun tolerant, especially in our PNW climate, so I'd be inclined to plant them in a sunnier area and save the shaded beds for plants that won't be as happy in a sunnier, hotter location. Pieris japonica comes to mind for an evergreen suggestion - available in a range of sizes and I like 'Cavatine' and 'Little Heath for smaller, dwarfer shrubs. Also dwarf mountain laurel (Kalmia) or smaller rhodies or evergreen azaleas. Winter daphne is another possibility. And if you want hydrangeas here, look at some of the compact bigleaf forms - 'Pia' (aka Pink Elf), the CityLine series or 'Mini Penny'. Or even one of the dwarf oakleafs, like 'Pee Wee' or Sykes Dwarf.

Deborah Silver, a garden designer in Detroit, has a good blog post with photos on pruning Limelight hydrangea which is the same species of hydrangea, so Little Lamb can be pruned the same way. However, beyond pruning, the other part of how floppy any H. paniculata is in the garden is genetics, the combination of bloom panicle size along with branch stiffness. If you search, Dirt Simple has other posts on pruning as well. There have also been a fair number of posts on this forum on pruning H. paniculatas on this forum as well.